Avatar: Raava's Children
by undercoverstreak
Summary: Thirty years after the death of Avatar Korra no new Avatar has been named. Korra's disconnect from her past lives has caused the Avatar cycle to break. The Avatar Spirit, fragmented into four pieces, has been reincarnated into children from each of the nations: Zo, a descendant of Avatar Aang, is tasked with finding the other three children and piecing Raava's spirit back together.
1. Prelude

292 AG.

It was a time in which all four nations lived in quiet harmony.

It had been thirty years since Korra, the then-Avatar, had passed with peace, in her sleep at the ripe age of eighty-eight with her wife at her bedside. The nations had rejoiced in the legacy she had left and all was well in the world for benders and non-benders alike.

As the thirtieth anniversary of Avatar Korra's death approached, the nations were struck by the realization that a new Avatar had yet to be named and the silent joy that had encased the world for more than a hundred years became religious terror. Each Earthbender over the age of sixteen was put through rigorous, and oftentimes torturous, examination: without an Avatar, the bridge between the spirit world and the mortal world would seal shut and people searched for the Avatar with terrified fanaticism.

The water tribes retreated into fearful solitude, the scarce remaining few Airbenders became secretive recluses, the Fire Nation regained its old "spark", and the Earthbenders tore their own strongholds to rubble in desperate search for the Avatar.

But there was no Avatar.


	2. Prologue

_My name is Zo._

 _I am one of the few remaining Airbenders._

 _I have a small piece, one of four, of the great spirit Raava living inside of me. I have the spirit of Avatar Aang within me. The Avatar Spirit has been with me since my birth. It lives in my very skin. In my chi._

 _My name is Zo and I am_ not _the Avatar._

All was quiet in the air temple. An angular boy of about fifteen sat in the middle of the tiled ceramic floor, floor that was inscribed with rings and long-forgotten script. The temple was an arcitechural reconstruction of what the old air temples had looked like, particularly those of the South. It did not have the same grandeur or spirituality of its predecessors.

The boy took a breath. It was a slow, careful inhalation that only someone who was familiar with breath would know exactly how to take. He had no arrow tattoos and his hair was dark and long like a Firebender. His eyes were tightly shut and his white face tilted upward to a window, skin pale in the sunlight. He had the look of someone who was contemplating something very deep.

"You've been here for long enough, Zo."

A robed figure emerged from the vague shadows beneath the bright sunny window, but the boy did not open his eyes. It was an elderly man with dusty wrinkled skin in orange Airbender dress. He had a look of sternness but his voice was gentle. "Sitting here wallowing can't be helping you, child."

Zo spoke with his eyes shut. "I don't understand."

"You don't understand how wallowing isn't doing you good? Well, it's really quite simple, as sitting around and stewing over things that can't be changed has been proven to, scientifically, rot your insides and cause massive brain—"

"No. I don't _understand_. I don't understand _it_."

"Aa-aah. I see." The frail Airbender made a " _hmm_ "ing noise deep and out from the very back of his throat, before sweeping his way over to seat himself beside the young boy. His robes bunched around his ankles and he sat cross-legged, sleeves in his lap. "What is it that you struggle with?"

The boy's head dropped to hang, listlessly, his chin in the hollow of his collarbone and limp, "All of it. Am I the Avatar or am I not?"

"You are not."

"Then what's all the fuss about?"

"People have waited a long time for the Avatar's return, do not expect them to be rational about what has occurred. Monk Kai has worked with the Northern water tribe and they have identified that a small fragment of the great Avatar Spirit has been reincarnated into your body."

Zo's voice was nearing a low growl as he spoke, "Then I should be the Avatar! I have the Avatar Spirit, therefore it is me. Avatar Korra, the great Avatar Aang… they live in me!"

The Airbender's robes ruffled and disturbed dust motes in the window's sunbeams. "Perhaps a small part of them, yes. But you are not complete. Avatar Korra severed her connection with her past lives and in doing so cut the spirit Raava, who lives inside you, into little pieces."

"I know, but shouldn't that make me the—"

"Pieces. You are a piece of a puzzle. Incomplete and unrealized on your own. The Avatar cannot be the Avatar without the Avatar Spirit and the Avatar cannot master all four elements without being the Avatar."

"—You're confusing me, grandfather!"

The old Airbender laid a crinkled, sleeved hand on Zo's slumping shoulders. "You have been chosen by the Airbending part of Raava. By Avatar Aang and those Airbenders that came before him."

"And what of Earthbending, grandfather? Was not the Avatar due to be born an Earthbender, or has the past couple thirty years been a complete and utter waste? And what about Waterbending, Firebending—what of Energybending, the connection to the spirits!"

"Be calm, my son. There will be a chosen Earthbender. And a Waterbender. And a Firebender. And together, you bring the fragments of the Avatar Spirit, each element—back together, a completed Avatar in four. You will speak to spirits, Energybend, honour Avatar Korra and those past…"

There was a billowing silence between grandfather and grandson. Neither of them spoke, and they stared at the window in the temple while the daylight began to fade. In no time, white moonlight streaked the temple floor in dark claw-marks and washed the ceramic brown into silver. Zo's grandfather took in a breath to speak.

But Zo, quick, managed to cut in speak first, "I will have to find them, won't I? The other reincarnates."

"Yes." His grandfather displayed no expression. "They are calling you."

Zo stood up, his twist of black hair spilling to his naval. He had seemed compact and full when he was tightly bunched in a sitting position, but when standing he was very thin, pale and downright scrawny. His thick of hair seemed to have more weight than his whole body did.

His grandfather remained seated as Zo swiftly made for the exit, his light footsteps echoing dully in the grand empty space of the temple. "An Earthbender, a Waterbender, and a Firebender…", said Zo.

He continued after a pause, "… Doesn't seem too hard, does it, grandfather?"

The shifting shadows near the door under the window enveloped his thin figure, and then, like a breath of wind, he was gone _._


End file.
